Joni Ackerman's decision to raise children, 25 years ago, came with a steep cost. She was then a pioneering filmmaker, one of the few women to break into the all-male Hollywood club of feature film directors. But she and her husband Paul had always wanted a family, and his ascending career at a premier television network provided a safety net. Now they've recently transplanted to Brooklyn, so that Paul can launch a major East Coast production studio, when a scandal rocks the film industry and forces Joni to revisit a secret from long ago involving her friend Val. Joni is adamant that the time has come to tell the story, but Val and Paul are reluctant, for different reasons. As the marriage frays and the friends spar about whether to speak up, Joni's struggles with isolation in a new city, and old resentments about the sacrifices she made on her family's behalf start to boil over. She takes solace, of sorts, in the novels of Patricia Highsmith—particularly the masterpiece Strangers on a Train, with its duplicitous characters and their murderous impulses—until the lines between reality and fantasy become blurred.
It is in the twists, unfortunately, that Invisible Woman stumbles, choosing expedience rather than loyalty to character. The problem is not the plotting: Lief has great fun with the Highsmith-inspired Joni, working in all the insecurities of an aging woman who has seen her life shrink to insignificance. Where the author falters is in the delivery: Instead of letting the unstable narrator work through her own situations, Lief recounts the twisted heart of specific Highsmith novels, then clocks Joni’s reaction to them ... Too often Lief leans on the Highsmith novels to signify emotional development, skipping over the kind of note-perfect exchanges that distinguish the rest of this fast-paced novel. Considering how clear-eyed Lief is about her troubled characters and the world that shaped them, these missteps are especially jarring. These injured, eloquent characters could well have been left to speak for themselves.
Twists and turns, its escalating dangers alternating with fresh reveals, as momentum builds to a breaking point. Joni is compulsive, troubled, but sympathetic; Val is less central but exerts a force of her own. Characters develop quickly from disagreeable but benign to chilling and dangerous; some readers will find this atmospheric novel engaging and disturbing enough to lose sleep. A literary psychological thriller, cultural study, and heartbreaking story of friendship and loss, Joni's unforgettable story involves layers of lies and the dangers of self-sublimation. Lief chills, entertains, and challenges.
Lief tells Joni’s story with lyrical energy while slowly ratcheting up the suspense, blending shocking twists with literary nuances to create a compelling, introspective narrative.
